50+
Years as a
Photographer
Duane Radford | Article & Photographs
Yikes, I’ve seen some remarkable
changes in technology during my
time as a photographer over the
last fi fty-plus years.
126 mm portrait photo ca 1967
126 mm nature water
lily photo ca 1966
Photos from the ’60s and ’70s do
not print as sharp and clear as
photos of today, but we are sharing
the originals with you here as a
reference point in the evolution of
photography.
16 | arta.net
I got into photography in 1963 with
a 126 mm Kodak Instamatic camera
— all that I could aff ord at the time.
Nowadays, this would be considered
a ‘point-and-shoot’ camera. This
camera brand was introduced in 1963
and went out of production in 2008.
It required little, if any, skill to use.
The “Kodak moment” was coined
when taking a picture of someone at
a particularly memorable moment.
Film initially came in twelve or
twenty exposures (later twenty-four),
and processing fees were part of the
fi lm purchase price. This camera
produced unspectacular pictures,
prints, or transparencies (i.e., slides)
unless the conditions were ideal.
I sent my exposed cartridges to a
Kodak processing lab in Toronto to
be developed; a Vancouver lab later
came onstream.
My wife subsequently gave me a
(dream) 35 mm Pentax Spotmatic
camera that I used to shoot prints
and transparencies. At the time, the
Pentax brand was one of the best
aff ordable cameras for both amateur
and professional photographers.
For many years, Kodak had a
monopoly on 35 mm print and slide
fi lm, which came in twenty-four or
thirty-six exposures, and at fi rst
could only be processed at the
above labs. Later on, many other
commercial labs could process
35 mm fi lm. Kodachrome 64 was
the standard-bearer in fi lm for many
years until Kodak discontinued
production in 2009. Fuji got into
the marketplace with Fuji Chrome,
featuring what many photographers
regarded to be the best in fi lm colour
saturation. Kodak fi led for Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection in 2012, going